


The Girl with the Cinder Block Garden

by sultrysweet



Series: Swan Queen Week (Summer 2015) [1]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F, Friendship/Love, Hurt/Comfort, Minor Violence, Romance, Sharing a Bed, Swan Queen Week, Swan Queen Week 2015
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-12
Updated: 2015-07-12
Packaged: 2018-04-09 01:13:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4328154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sultrysweet/pseuds/sultrysweet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>SQW July '15 Day 1: Bed sharing.  Regina helps Emma through the aftermath of what happened while she was the new Dark One.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Girl with the Cinder Block Garden

**Author's Note:**

> Not a lot of bed sharing, but I think the moments leading up to it were really important to make it kind of unique and more emotional. Hopefully I accomplished that.

_“Come back to me,” she’d cried over a familiar form that was, in that moment, lifeless and cold in her arms. She’d been young, so young, just a girl. She’d loved horses and riding and the wind in her braided hair and all the various colors during the fall season. Born into royalty yet wanting nothing that came with it; the power or jewels or titles, none of it. All she wanted was cradled in her arms on the hay covered floor of stables she’d soon refuse to set foot in after that night._

_The tears she’d cried made her voice break and waver and the only words she had been capable of forming were pleas for her dearest Daniel to return, to live again, to be hers. Her heart wasn’t just bruised or broken after that, it was shattered. She’d welcomed the darkness, gave it what was left her heart as every last jagged piece of it turned hard and black._

_“The darkness will make a meal of you yet, dearie,” Rumple had warned when she’d told him she was finished with their magic lessons, not willing to become a monster like her mother. “It’s already started and it likes the way you taste. It doesn’t mind the bitter.”_

_She had been lost and drowning and desperate, so sad and self-loathing. She’d fought with herself more than anyone else and she’d been ready to end her existence on more than one occasion. It was too much, all too much, and she’d wanted nothing more than for the darkness to leave her. She’d never asked for it, never asked for Daniel to die, never asked for her mother to hurt her as much as she had, never asked to be used or manipulated or consumed._

_“You can no more fly from your fate than can that swan,” Rumpelstiltskin tittered with twisted glee as he motioned to the roast swan in the center of the table._

_Fate. Swan. Darkness. Monster._

_“Only on the inside.”_

With a gasp, Regina bolted out of sleep and shot up in a chair. She took a few deep breaths, which took more effort than she realized, to steady herself as she took in her surroundings. Wooden floorboards, chipped and white painted wood dresser, few family pictures on display around the room, a bed with a quilt-like blanket for a comforter, and a beaten and bloody blonde sprawled out on top of it less than a foot in front of her. She was in Storybrooke, at the Charming’s apartment, in Emma’s room, and she’d been there all night.

Henry was curled up on the floor beside her chair, thankfully still asleep. It had been a long couple of months. “The Enchanted Forest wasn’t even fun for me the first time,” he’d told her when they’d first arrived in the other realm. At least the first time Henry had been there, his stay was short-lived. Twenty-four hours. It was the kind of time everyone, Regina included, had wished it had taken to deal with their latest problem. Instead, their misfit band of heroes and redeemed villains went on a taxing journey to find Merlin.

Finding Merlin meant going to Camelot and Camelot was a land that resided far beyond the five kingdoms—Snow’s, Midas’, George’s, Belle’s, Thomas’—in the Enchanted Forest. Merlin kept hidden as well so the search for him wasn’t easy, but their trek through the semi-hostile forest was even more difficult. It had been like Neverland all over again minus the mermaids and demented man-child. Traveling across a majority of the realm exhausted them physically during the hottest season of the year while it also drained them emotionally, knowing they were only making the trip for Emma Swan who was locked up in Rumpelstiltskin’s old cell. No one had been happy with that decision—least of all Emma—but it had to be done. It had been their only option. Where else were they going to keep the new Dark One while they wandered through the Enchanted Forest in the hopes that they’d find Merlin and destroy the darkness within the former Savior?

Regina looked over the other woman as she slept. Deep breath in, deep breath out. Emma was fine. She was safe and she was home. She was a little worse for wear, but she was better. Her hair was less white and her eyebrows were almost back to their usual blonde hue as well. Her lips were chapped and a faint pink and her cheeks were slashed open with cuts in a few places. Dirt was still embedded under her fingernails, but the rest of it had been gently, carefully, wiped from her hands, arms, neck, and face. Emma was as clean as she could be without a proper shower, which had been unsuccessfully attempted the previous night.

_“Stop it! Let go of me. No! Get off me,” Emma snarled and thrashed around between Hook and David as they gripped her arms and tried to lead her into the bathroom. Regina, Snow, Henry, and Robin had all watched as they followed the other three into the apartment._

_Robin tried to hold her hand, his eyes wide and sad and he looked almost as worried as the rest of them about Emma. She moved her hand away as soon as their fingers brushed and instead wrapped her arms around her torso. A moment later, Henry pressed against her side and wrapped his arms around her. He squeezed her and then sniffled against her ribcage. It didn’t take long before Regina felt her shirt dampen where Henry buried his face against her._

_She let go of herself and returned Henry’s embrace before she rested her cheek against the top of his head and watched Emma refuse help, yelling at everyone that cared about her no matter what they did. ‘Residual side effects,’ Merlin had warned them before they’d left for Storybrooke once the darkness had been removed from the blonde._

_“Don’t. Touch me,” Emma shrieked before she elbowed Hook in the eye and kicked David in the shin. Then she tried to run. She spun away from the bathroom and made a break for the apartment door despite there being four other people that stood between her and the path to freedom._

_Green eyes were sharp and focused and not really green. They almost glowed gold like Rumpelstiltskin’s once had when his skin was scaly and glittered. She glared at Robin first, the only person between her and the door that she assessed as a physical threat. She huffed at him as though he wasn’t worth her time before she lunged forward, but Snow slid in front of her with determination in her eyes even though the rest of her expression was worn._

_“You need to fight this,” Snow said. “Remember who you are.”_

_Emma growled and shoved her mother aside with a bit of help from her magic. She was on the move again, almost sprinting toward the door, when Regina let go of Henry used her own magic to lock it. While Emma still could have tried to unlock it or use magic to break through the old wood, the mere action of locking her in was not something the woman appreciated. She turned to face Regina and sneered at her before she tried to blast the brunette with magic that had become less foreign to her during her time as the Dark Swan._

_Regina countered Emma’s magic with her own and the apartment shook from the aftermath of the collision. Regina didn’t wait for Emma to think of another way to attack her. She immediately poofed away from Henry and the others and reappeared behind the blonde._

_Emma whipped around to face her, but she wasn’t fast enough. Regina grabbed her and then poofed them out of the room. Once the two of them stood upstairs in Emma’s room, she heard Henry call out for her. She wouldn’t respond until she was sure she had Emma calm and neutralized. Neutralized. Like she was a threat. Well, she was._

_Emma squirmed in her arms and Regina wanted to cry for her, but she didn’t when she realized the droplets she felt on her arms as they remained around the blonde were tears. Emma was already crying. Regina felt for her, but she knew in that moment she had to be the strong one. She loosened her grip on Emma and unclasped her hands around the younger woman’s waist so she could bring one up to run through long, messy hair._

_Emma stopped squirming and started to slump and melt in Regina’s arms. Regina was there to catch and hold her up. She ran her fingers through knotted hair that had been earlier released from the tight bun the Dark Swan had preferred and she just listened to Emma sob. She leaned forward and pressed her forehead against the base of Emma’s neck. Only a second after she made contact, Emma let out a pained cry like it was the first time she let herself feel anything in the last couple of months. And maybe it had been the first time. Regina understood that better than anyone._

_Several pairs of feet barreled up the stairs and Henry was the first to burst into the room. Snow, followed by David and Hook, came in after him. They stared at her and Emma with sadness and immense concern. They all froze in place and stood at least a few steps away from the two of them as the blonde continued to cry. Regina only bothered to look at Henry when she turned her head to acknowledge the others. She kept her temple pressed to the back of Emma’s neck despite having turned her head. It was an odd position, an odd way to be seen by the Charmings and Hook and her own son, but Emma came first. Emma had been put first for a while now. Trying to avoid exactly this from happening to her had been the main reason Regina had gone undercover with Maleficent, Ursula, and Cruella._

_But then Emma had also put her first and that was how they’d ended up where they had. Promises about happy endings and all that._

_Regina closed her eyes and turned her head away from the others just as another pair of feet entered the room. She rested her forehead against Emma’s back again and just held her, held on tight but not too tight. Without a word, she communicated to Emma that the blonde wasn’t trapped or caged. She was free. She was safe. She was home and she was Emma._

_“Just Emma,” Regina whispered, but in the quiet room—the silence only filled with Emma’s crying, which had softened considerably in the last few minutes—it was incredibly loud. She wasn’t sure, but she had a feeling everyone had heard her._

_Slowly, the room started to clear out as David asked Hook to take the couch and Robin suggested he leave them to their family moment. When it was just Henry, Snow, David, and Regina left, Emma crawled into bed with Regina’s help and almost immediately passed out. Snow and Charming tucked her in while Regina pulled Henry away from the bed to give the other three their space._

_“I want to stay here,” Henry said and it was the first time he’d spoken since their return from the Enchanted Forest less than an hour prior. Regina didn’t want to—and wouldn’t—admit it, but she wanted to stay as well. She was thankful her son,_ their _son, gave her an excuse to be at Emma’s side a little while longer._

Regina took a deep breath and decided while everyone else was still asleep, the sun not even above the horizon from what she could tell through the closed blinds over the window, there was no better time for her to clean herself up. For the first time in the last few days, Regina took a good look in the mirror and noticed the bags under her eyes. She looked a little pale and her eyes didn’t sparkle, they were dull and tired. Her hair was greasy, frizzy, and curled unusually near the tips. She’d slept in the last outfit she’d worn in the Enchanted Forest, a revamped riding outfit more fitting for a former queen, although it had grass stains on the knees and patches of blood, sweat, and dirt caked over the shirt.

She tugged down the neckline of her shirt to reveal scratched up olive skin, a bruise blooming below her collarbone and just slightly above her heart closer to the center of her chest.  She remembered the hand responsible for it, remembered the shouts and high-pitched giggles as Emma lashed out at her with evil delight. She remembered holding her ground for as long as she could before she finally cracked under Emma’s gaze and unrelenting rage. The woman was fascinated with the pain she was able to cause, either by crushing a heart or by torturing those closest to her. Regina wasn’t her first victim, but she was the one who suffered the most at Emma’s hands.

_Snow, Hook, and Regina went to the near end of the realm to get to Merlin while Henry and David stayed behind to watch over Emma. Henry was warned to refrain from visiting the dungeon, however, and not only by his mother but by his grandparents as well. When Regina, Snow, and Hook returned with Merlin, they were told—out of earshot from Henry—that Emma had crushed a guard’s heart while they’d been away._

_“I found his body,” David said when he’d pulled them aside. “She cackled when she told me what happened.”_

_Snow started crying and blaming herself, blaming her and David for all the lies and the way they’d tried so hard to make sure Emma was good when all they did was fail. Hook punched a wall and stormed off. Regina urged David to explain everything. Once he’d shared all he knew with her, Regina went down in the dungeon alone and hoped there was something she could say or do to help Emma deal with what she’d done. It had been foolish to try before Merlin had finished the potion he said was needed to help rid the blonde of the darkness. She just wanted to see if there wasn’t still a part of Emma trapped inside her own mind that hated herself for what she’d done. She just wanted to make sure if that was the case that Emma didn’t beat herself up for it before she was completely herself again. She didn’t beat herself up, though. Instead, she beat up Regina._

_“Regina,” Emma purred in a partially breathy, girlish voice that sent chills down her spine worse than the effect Rumple used to have on her. “Come to see me? It’s been a while. I was starting to worry I’d done something wrong.”_

_Emma grinned when she emphasized the word “wrong.” Her darkened eyes playfully glimmered in the limited light in the cell._

_“Why did you crush that guard’s heart,” Regina asked and sidestepped Emma’s baiting comments._

_Emma hummed and closed her eyes as her grin widened. She’d clearly taken pleasure in the aforementioned act._

_“I wanted to know what it felt like,” Emma answered. “To hold a life in my hand, to feel it beat and pulse before it turned to dust that just…slipped through my fingers and blew away in the wind.”_

_Regina stepped closer to the bars against better judgement. “And how did it feel?”_

_Emma chuckled and slinked toward the bars from her side of the cell as Regina neared. “Invigorating.”_

_Emma wrapped her hands around the bars and raked her eyes over Regina’s form from head to toe and back again. She licked her blood red lips when their eyes met through the bars and without warning or her control, Regina saw flashes of Emma Swan the morning after her arrival in Storybrooke. Graham had her locked up in one of the cells at the station for drunk driving and destruction of town property. How far they’d come since then._

_“Come a little closer,” Emma suggested. “I want to show you something.”_

_She knew not to do what Emma asked, but she was drawn to the other woman. She wanted to help. She wanted to save her. So she came closer._

_Emma reached through the bars and caressed her cheek with the back of her ring-adorned fingers. Regina felt the cool metal against her warm skin as well as Emma’s slightly rough fingers and the heat beneath it. Emma’s touch was gentle from cheekbone to jaw, but as her fingertips traced along her chin Regina was reminded that she wasn’t talking to Emma._

_The Dark Swan gripped her chin between her fingers and pulled her flush against the bars like Rumpelstiltskin had done at least once before._

_“Don’t underestimate me,” Emma growled. “You have no idea what I’m capable of.”_

_Regina’s heart sank and so did her body. She fell forward like melted chocolate with a sigh before she disappeared in a cloud of dark purple smoke. And then she was on the other side of the bars, trapped in the cell with Emma and stripped of her magic until someone came to open the door. When Emma turned to look at her, she looked horrifyingly pleased._

_“Oh, I knew you wouldn’t disappoint me, sweet, sweet Regina,” Emma said with a certain level of fondness and affection._

_She blinked and Emma was in her face, malice twinkling in her eyes. Before she even knew what was happening, Emma clawed at her chest and yanked her shirt just low enough to dig her nails into soft and supple flesh over where her heart beat inside her chest._

_Regina yelped and squeezed her eyes shut before Emma then pushed her back until she slammed into the cave wall._

_“Now I wonder,” Emma breathed against her mouth and nose, “how it feels to control the Evil Queen.”_

_Regina gasped at the name as it carelessly tumbled past the other woman’s lips. A second later she didn’t have time to hate how vicious Emma had become since she let the darkness swallow her whole because all she could think—all she could feel—was pain as Emma clawed at her chest over and over again. Emma never bothered to ease inside and reach for what she claimed to want. She just kept digging, scrapping, clawing with her long nails as Regina screamed and twisted under her hand._

_“Emma, please,” she begged as tears cascaded down her face while Emma’s face hovered closely above her. Emma’s nearly black eyes bore down on her as she smirked, bigger with each howl the blonde elicited from her. Her voice dropped to a near whisper as she continued to plead, “Please. Come back to me.”_

Freshly showered and out of her thoughts once again, Regina walked back into Emma’s room wearing clothes she borrowed from the blonde’s dresser. She was confined in a tight pair of dark denim and a tank top she covered with a loose flannel shirt. As she made her way back to her chair beside Emma’s bed, Henry wriggled around on the floor. He remained bundled up in a sleeping bag with his eyes still closed. After a few seconds, he seemed to settle. Just readjusting himself, Regina assumed as she walked around him and she sat back down.

She pulled her knees up to her chest and pushed her recently bare feet against the seat as she struggled to find a semi-comfortable position. She flipped over again and again, tried various angles on each side and even rolled onto her stomach with her front smashed against the back of the chair. She huffed every time she failed to relax in any one position.

Someone grumbled and Regina popped an eye open to check that everyone was okay. Henry hadn’t seemed to have moved since she sat down so she looked over at Emma. The blonde’s brow was furrowed and her hands were balled into fists in front of her chest. Regina watched her slide her knees up toward her chest as Emma seemed to curl in on herself while she slept.

Emma groaned and grunted when she started to kick out and wrap the sheets around her like a mangled cocoon. Although she’d been the one to spin the sheets around her body, it only seemed to bother the woman more. The sounds she made grew in volume while her physical outbursts grew in number and size. The more she struggled against the sheets, the bigger her kicks, flips, and yanks were. She tugged violently on the sheets in a desperate attempt to free herself from a web of her own making and Regina wondered how hard and how long the woman who have to keep it up before the fabric finally gave out and the seams snagged.

 She stood up and took the two steps between her chair and the bed before she lightly jerked Emma’s shoulder.

“Emma,” she whispered and made sure to keep her face a safe distance from Emma’s. She didn’t want to accidentally be head-butted or freak the blonde out with her potentially unwanted proximity. “Emma, wake up.”

The younger woman responded with a whimper and another groan before she jolted awake. Her eyes flew open in an instant and immediately landed on Regina, but her gaze was unfocused. She panted as she tried to catch her breath before she finally was able to recognize the brunette. As soon as she did, she relaxed and took a deep breath.

“You’re okay,” Regina quietly and soothingly assured her as she started to rub Emma’s arm up and down, up and down.

“I- I remember,” Emma breathed out. “I don’t…I don’t want to remember.”

“I know,” Regina nodded. “There’s a lot you need to process. There’s a lot you need to talk about, talk _through_.”

Emma shook her head and her eyes widened with fear.

“Relax,” Regina cooed and let go of Emma’s arm. “We’ll deal with it whenever _you’re_ ready.”

Emma released a heavy sigh of relief and closed her eyes. She thought better of it a moment later when she pressed a hand to her stomach and whimpered again, her eyes wet with unshed tears when she opened them again. “Oh god.”

“Do you need a trash can,” Regina asked and preemptively reached for the one she purposely kept near Emma’s bedside.

“No. No,” Emma answered between thick gulps. “I- I think I’ll…I’ll be okay.”

“Eventually,” Regina agreed and moved away from the trash can. “Water?”

Emma licked her lips and breathed in through her mouth, out through her nose as she redirected her attention at the ceiling for a moment.

“Um, yeah. Thanks.”

She came back to the room a little less than a minute later with a water bottle and saw Emma sitting up in bed with her back against the headboard. Her knees were drawn up to her chest, her arms wrapped around her legs to hold her position. She looked small, lost, scared.

“Here,” she said as she offered Emma the water.

Emma wordlessly accepted it and didn’t wait to unscrew the cap and take a sip.

“You shouldn’t stay up much longer,” Regina said as sat in the chair again.

“You’re the one who woke me up,” Emma pointed out and set the water bottle down on the nightstand between the bed and the chair.

“You were having dreams, nightmares really, but I assume they were just gruesome memories.”

Emma stared at her like a deer caught in headlights. Regina knew then that her assumption had been right.

“It seems you’ve forgotten who I was. I took hearts, commanded the slaughter of entire villages, fantasized about a young girl’s head on a platter. I manipulated a genie into killing a king and set him up to take the fall for it just as I did when I framed your mother for Kathryn’s murder. I _know_ what you’re feeling. I’ve been where you’ve been.”

“Did it- Did you feel so…charred? I felt…dead inside. And…the only thing that…that…” Emma trailed off and stared down at her lap with so much regret.

“And the only thing that made you feel anything was someone else’s suffering,” Regina finished for her, but phrased it as a question and not a statement.

Emma slowly looked up at her and nodded.

“I didn’t feel dead,” Regina started to explain. “I felt numb, but I always felt alive when I inflicted pain on someone other than myself. To feel dead…well, I would have felt rotten to the core. I would have felt decay, like whatever I did then would be the only thing I ever did again.”

Emma nodded again. “That’s what it felt like. To be…what I was. I felt like I wasn’t going anywhere. I was just going to stay there, be miserable, and seek out others I could hurt just so I could look forward to something.”

“I’m sorry.”

Emma looked at her again, that time with confusion. “What do you have to be sorry for?”

“I couldn’t stop it from getting to you. I couldn’t stop you from yourself once it did.”

“Hey, I _chose_ to tether myself to the dagger and that…all-consuming darkness that came with it. There was no stopping it _or_ me.”

Regina started to spin the ring on her finger out of nervous habit and a few seconds later looked down at Henry. Emma’s eyes followed hers.

“He never saw me like that,” Emma said.

“We made sure he didn’t,” Regina told her.

“Who’s we?”

“Your parents and myself. Hook also agreed, but it wasn’t like he had any say in what happened with Henry.”

“Thank you,” Emma said after a moment. “That would have been…traumatizing to say the least.”

“After last night, I think he was traumatized anyway.”

“Last night? But I wasn’t… I…”

“You weren’t…what- _who_ you used to be, no, but you aggressively resisted any and all help. Your boyfriend fell asleep with a bag of frozen peas on his eye and your father _has_ to sleep on his back if he wants to avoid further pain until his shin heals.”

“Oh. Right,” Emma sadly said as she curled up again, knees to her chest and her arms secured around her legs to hold herself together. Not much later, the blonde turned to her again and they locked eyes for a brief moment before Emma’s gaze wandered to her chest. “I’m _really_ sorry. I don’t- I don’t know why I—”

Regina shook her head. “I’m not going to hold it against you.”

“Regina, I nearly ripped your chest open with my bare hand. And that was _before_ I planned to shove it inside and take your heart for not-so-safe keeping.”

Regina averted her eyes. She found a spot in the corner of the room to look at and tried not to think about how Emma looked as she grabbed at her several times before David came down with Merlin and ended the assault.

“It’s funny how the tables turned, huh,” Emma rhetorically asked with a self-deprecating chuckle. “I guess it’s me who wanted to destroy _your_ happiness. I make such a crappy Savior, don’t I.” That time it wasn’t a question. Not even a rhetorical one.

“Emma—”

“No,” the younger woman cut her off. “You know, some of that darkness wasn’t Rumple’s. It was mine. Rumple said it before, when your frenemies or whatever showed up. I had the potential for darkness. Why do you think it was so easy for the darkness of the Dark One to wrap me up in its cold, disgusting embrace?”

Regina quietly laughed and then said, “It _chose_ me, Emma. You stood there and watched it start in on me for almost a minute before you decided it didn’t have to have me. I think that says more than you _throwing_ yourself at it to _save_ someone does.”

After that, neither one of them said anything for a while. They sat in silence together, both of them far too awake after such little sleep, until eventually Regina tried to get comfortable in the chair again.

“Try to sleep,” she said. “Everything that’s running through your head right now…it’s going to take time.”

Regina had only just closed her eyes when Emma finally spoke again.

“You’re never going to be comfortable in that chair.”

“There have been very few times in my life I’ve actually been comfortable,” Regina confessed. “I’ll live.”

“Well… _I’m_ not comfortable,” Emma softly said.

Regina opened her eyes and looked over at the other woman. Emma stared right at her, her expression an easy read. She was asking for help. She was asking for a friend. Regina abandoned the chair and walked over to the empty side of Emma’s bed. She pulled back the covers and slipped under them just as Emma did the same.

“I can’t just chase away the darkness for you,” Regina informed her as relaxed on her back beside the blonde.

“I know.”

“But you _will_ get through this,” she assured her.

Emma smiled after a moment and rolled onto her side to face Regina. “I know.”

Without thinking, Regina reached out and ran thumb along Emma’s smile. It faded under her touch as Emma’s expression went from seemingly happy to expectant and curious. Regina had once been carefree. She’d had dreams and desires, all innocent. Then something happened and everything changed. Her entire perspective shifted and she was molded into a monster.

Emma hadn’t been any different. As a foster kid in the Land without Magic she probably hadn’t been as carefree, at least not for as long, as Regina had, but she was far from what she’d become when the darkness had taken over her mind, body, and soul. They’d been two girls once. They’d been just Emma and just Regina. Neither of them should have had to carry the burden of _the Evil Queen_ and _the Dark Swan_ , but they had. After all of that, they needed—deserved—a silver lining. They needed and they had Henry, but, for those moments when they couldn’t turn to a child, maybe instead they could turn to each other.

That night, they did.

“So,” Emma started to say as she inched a little closer to her and blinked out of her haze when Regina finally pulled her thumb away from pink lips. “Are you any closer to your happy ending?”

A fast forming smile spread across Regina’s face before laughter bubbled out of her.

Emma frowned and furrowed her brow. “What? Why are you laughing?”

Regina quieted down, but continued to smile before she slid closer to the blonde. “I think it’s time I start looking for a happy _beginning_.”

“Oh,” Emma said before she trapped her bottom lip between her teeth for a moment. “And…you haven’t found that?”

“Not while you were in that cell,” Regina admitted.

“But…now?”

Regina stared into those beautiful green eyes for a long time before she replied, “Yes. Now.”

“Why not sooner,” Emma asked and Regina rolled her eyes at that question.

“Idiot.”

Emma pouted in response and closed the small gap that still remained between them. She pushed a hand out toward Regina and slowly ran it up over her torso and side before she draped it over the brunette’s waist.

Regina put a hand on the arm draped over her and ran it up to Emma’s elbow. Her breathing was shallow as she leaned forward ever so slowly. Emma licked her lips and her gaze fell from the woman’s eyes to her mouth.

“You saved me,” Emma softly said and she felt hot breath on her lips and chin.

“It was a group effort,” Regina said as she leaned in just a little more. Their noses brushed.

“Doesn’t matter. You worked so damn hard to fix it and then you did. Does that make you the new Savior?”

“Emma,” Regina groaned and their lips grazed as she spoke.

“What,” Emma asked with a small smile as she looked from Regina’s lips to her chocolate brown eyes.

“Shut up,” Regina said before she pressed their lips together in a slow and searing kiss.  

Emma closed her eyes and smiled into the kiss. She clutched Regina and held her close as they kissed a few more times. The kisses became chaste each time the touched as exhaustion finally wore down the last of their energy. Both of them were still content when they stopped completely.

Regina gently pushed Emma’s arm and after a few seconds, Emma took the hint and rolled over. Regina mirrored Emma’s previous move and draped an arm over the younger woman’s waist. She tugged her toward herself and buried her face in the crook of Emma’s neck.

Emma quietly moaned in both pleasure and agreement and pushed into Regina until her ass was firmly pressed against the woman’s groin.

“Goodnight, Emma,” Regina said into blonde hair with a low, slightly raspy voice.

“Goodnight, Regina,” Emma mumbled as the two of them started to drift off.

There was still a lot to be figured out. Emma still needed to confront her parents about everything that had happened and she still had to process and accept the things she’d done. They were eventually going to have to talk about what sharing a bed meant. They’d probably have to face Henry in the morning because chances were he’d wake up before them. And then there was Hook and Robin. But all of that was tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that for as long as it took for all of their issues to be handled. But that night, everything was already figured out. They were just two people. They were just Emma and Regina. Together.

**Author's Note:**

> "We can't run from fate,  
> But we can let it take us down,  
> Down this road,  
> Where all our colors run together.  
> Let's take the worst and make it better,  
> Let's take this mess and make a home."  
> -Cinderblock Garden by All Time Low (fic title taken from this song)


End file.
